YU YU HAKUSHO #17 -- Watch & Learn

Every time I see this guy, I think Gohan's discolored his clothes in the wash.

Silly Kuwabara. If there’s no body in sight - - if the big cat man
doesn’t explode into a confetti of bones and guts - - then nobody’s dead. Of
course, when you’ve essentially got Biff Tannen fighting the evilest spirits of
the netherworld, you can’t really expect him to be comprehending the bigger
picture.

What’s funny about watching this show now is that I’m seeing something
that’s usually only viewed today through rose-tinted glasses. As it’s my
first time seeing it, though, I’m not wearing such a choice in eye ware. So I don’t
have any of that ever-so-distorting nostalgia for my teens which I really felt
elevated shows like TRIGUN and UTENA onto lofty pedestals that weren’t quite
warranted. Despite that, I’m finding that YU YU HAKUSHO definitely holds up,
and I’m not entirely sure why I’m liking it so much more than the current crop
of shonen.

Is it because this show comes from a purer era? From a time before this
genre got too organized in its own conventions? Most times, such terms are uttered
by fans of a niche who just haven’t ever gotten over what they enjoyed in
middle or high school. Like I said, I have no such bias, and I’m continually
impressed by how even the animation - - while still noticeably dated - -
looks better than most cartoons you see stateside today. When it takes
shortcuts in the rendering, those shortcuts still look better than the
shortcuts taken, now.

I’m sure you lunatics must have a wealth of opinions about this. What
does the difference come down to? Were animators more disciplined back then? Or
did they simply work on less-reasonable and even-more-grueling production
schedules? I feel like I’m grasping at something here, but I need some guidance
to get a firm hold. Enlighten me!

Look up this episode, "Byakko's Lair" and decide for
yourself, then read my comments on the previous episode here.

The animation studio is Studio Pierrot (the same creators of Naruto and Bleach) and while they've always been well-regarded, I think they simply have too much on their plates now.

I took a quick skim of their Wikipedia page just now, and during Yu Yu Hakusho's run (1992-1995) it was one of only two projects they worked on in those four years. They had wrapped up two other projects the year it started and were able to focus entirely on Yu Yu until 1994, when they had a 50-episode show that ended a few weeks after Yu Yu.

These days, Pierrot not only has the two biggest names in anime to produce EVERY WEEK, but they also animate Beezlebub (who knows how long that run will be) EVERY WEEK and have frequently put out other shows alongside those two or three. That's not even including the Bleach and Naruto movies, which are seemingly semi-annual.

I was lucky enough to visit the studio in question a few years ago when I visited Japan (or at least, their MAIN studio), and it seemed then that they simply had too much on their hands. They can't spend the time on one individual show, one individual frame, that they used to. They may have a bigger staff, but that larger staff (I would wager) has fewer true artists than they did back in the Yu Yu days.

It makes me really happy to see that my favorite shonen series is not my favorite just because I grew with it. And if my own opinion about the quality of the arcs mirrors yours, it gets so much better from where you are right now.